60% of WastServ employees that were hired in 2017 were employed during the election campaign, figures provided to the Public Accounts Committee by WasteServ CEO Tonio Montebello have revealed.
The same figures also show that more than 30% of the employees were also from the 1st District.
The committee is currently investigating the recruitment of employees with WasteServ in July, particularly during the election campaign, after a request was made by the Nationalist Party.
Environment Minister Jose Herrera, who is politically responsible for WasteServ, contests on the 1st district, which includes the localities of Valletta, Floriana, Hamrun, Marsa, Pieta, Gwardamanga, and Santa Venera.
Montebello did insist, when pressed by PAC Chairman Beppe Fenech Adami, who noted the statistic from figures given to the committee, that the state entity did its recruitment through a contractor and that there was never any specific request from the minister to provide employment for particular individuals.
Fenech Adami also expressed dismay that between 70 to 80 persons were employed at WasteServ in the weeks following the fire at Sant Antin Plant on May 22, a few weeks prior to the election, despite the number of persons who were left without a place of work and had to be relocated.
Montebello also said that 47 persons were directly employed by WastServ, only to be moved on to other government departments such as park maintenance, however, he stressed that this is clearly stipulated within their Memorandum of Understanding.
This, he said, was done following a discussion with the Minister, who had made the request.
The CEO did claim that the WasteServ Chairman had been approached by an Opposition MP with a similar request.
Recruitment fell under approved€3 million euro operational expenses - CEO
MP Claudio Grech questioned Montebello regarding the recruitment strategy of WasteServ.
Montebello, who had previously said that the board approves the recruitment strategy of the entity, provided an annual budget report that is approved by the board at WasteServ and indicated that €3 million was to be allocated to operational expenses.
Montebello did not provide an actual figure of how many employees were required, insisting that the number was verbally discussed and that he alone would approve the number of staff employed, when pressed further by an unimpressed Grech, who pointed out that a number of different items fell under operational expenses.
At this point, MP Clayton Bartolo interjected to note that the report was tabled in 2017 and that the Opposition were implying that Montebello had knowledge that the snap election would be called, something which the CEO said he did not know about.
MP Jason Azzopardi quizzed Montebello on the amounts of recycling waste collected and sorted by WasteServ in view of the decreasing numbers noted in NSO and Eurostat reports, with the latest NSO figures finding that the rate of recycling had dropped from 12% in 2012 to under 7% in 2015.
Montebello said that the figures were not accurate and were taken out of context, noting that there had been in an increase of 24% in exported recycling material.
Leaked emails remain feature of meeting
In a typically fiery committee meeting, MP Julia Farrugia Portelli told Fenech Adami that he was “not fit to chair this committee” after noting bias on his part when failing to reprimand suggestions to PL members that they “were not running an election campaign.”
The emails published by MaltaToday revealing how former Ministers, MPs, civil servants, party candidates, and representatives of WasteServ, between 2009 and 2013 under a PN government, would offer employment to specific voters; often using their personal emails rather than their government servers, was referenced throughout, with the PL MPs pointing out that members of the committee, such as Fenech Adami and Claudio Grech featured in the leak.
Fenech Adami and Grech have insisted that these were requests and recommendations which were not even accepted.